Thanks to improved commuter links, good schools and lower prices, families are
flocking to Kent

Kent is woven subliminally into our sense of national identity. The oasts, Martello towers, orchards and White Cliffs of Dover summon up a picture of England as it once was. It is present, too, in the novels of Charles Dickens, who lived at Gad’s Hill Place near Rochester and conjured extraordinary characters such as Miss Havisham and Edwin Drood out of the landscape he knew so well.

These sepia tints are now swept away by a tide of Londoners moving out, in search of quirky seaside at Whitstable, or hoping to give their children a grammar school education, or seizing on the vastly improved rail commute. They also come to find lower house prices.

Savills’s figures show that the average price of a detached house in Kent is now £379,674 — considerably less than Surrey’s £691,916.

“Kent has been seen as a poor relation to the other counties in the South East because it didn’t have a good rail network or infrastructure and people always thought of places like down-at-heel Ramsgate,” says Simon Backhouse of Strutt & Parker. “They overlooked the beauty of the Weald and Romney Marsh, which are really right on London’s doorstep.”

Nor does Kent have the great estates which provide an inbuilt social hierarchy and architectural grandeur in the other Home Counties. This is because, while other counties had inheritance laws based on primogeniture, allowing the eldest son to inherit a whole estate, Kent operated a system of gavelkind which meant that estates were split up. Yet it has its moments of high glamour in castles such as Leeds, Scotney and Hever, and at Knole House and Sissinghurst, both full of stories and romance.

Since the economy dipped in 2007, Kent’s fortunes perversely have improved. “Buyers have twigged that there is better value in East Kent in particular and that there is wonderful variety in the architecture — converted oasts, weatherboarded cottages, tile-hanging and medieval timber-framed houses,” says Simon Blackhouse. “It’s not green welly, not Gloucestershire or Wiltshire. As well as commuters, artists come for the quality of the light.” The Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate also carries promise.

Seen through the prism of extraordinarily high London values, prices are still affordable. For instance, you could sell a three-bedroom terrace for £1 million in Clapham and buy Gore Court at Eastry near Sandwich, being sold by Strutt & Parker (01227 451123) at £650,000. You get a Grade II listed historic house with four bedrooms and a two-bedroom annex. But prices are going up.

“The high-speed train link has brought buyers out close to Canterbury and Ashford,” says Simon. Canterbury is 57 minutes into Stratford and London St Pancras; Ashford is 37 minutes. “This has pushed up the price of a Victorian semi in Canterbury from £550,000 to £900,000,” he says. “In five years prices in the area have nearly doubled.”

The high-speed rail also makes it the Francophile’s favourite location. Pleasure-lovers can hop to France for lunch and be home for Kentish apple pie before bed.

Giles Newby Vincent, an architect who specialises in restoring historic houses in France and Italy, and who keeps a château in the Dordogne as well as a pied-à-terre in London, has found Kent an ideal perch.

Giles Newby Vincet is selling his home, the Old Rectory

Giles was the mastermind behind the design of the Crawleys’ house in Downton Abbey, at Bampton in Oxfordshire. His own house, the Old Rectory in Wickhambreaux, built in 1713 with wood panelling, marble fireplaces and high ceilings, sits in one of Kent’s loveliest villages with a green, a white clapboard mill and a pub.

Strutt & Parker is selling the eight-bedroom house with a two-bedroom cottage at £2.25 million as “one of the finest early 18th-century houses in east Kent”.

“I regularly go to Paris and to the Dordogne and London,” says Giles. “You can leave Ashford by train and be in Paris an hour and 40 minutes later, though of course you lose an hour in the time change. It is all terribly civilised.”

Schools remain the great magnet in Kent. Tunbridge Wells and Sevenoaks are the most popular hunting grounds, each bristling with grammars and private schools, and both just beyond the M25.

Daniel and Tracey Webster followed a well-worn trail when they moved from Streatham seven years ago, to rent in Sevenoaks before buying.

Tracey and Daniel Webster in Sevenoaks (RII SCHROER)

“Our daughter was two years old and we had another child on the way,” says Tracey. “We rented because the property market is so competitive here, and that put us in a strong position to buy.” Her daughter Abigail is now nine, Owen is seven, and both attend the highly rated Sevenoaks Primary School. Their third child, Eliza, is two.

They are now selling their four-bedroom house in Bradbourne Road, at £640,000 through Strutt & Parker (01732 459900) but intend to stay in town.

“About 40 per cent of our sales go to Londoners, and many now want to be walking distance from the station and the schools,” says Philip James of Strutt & Parker. “This is the classic buy and will probably sell over the asking price.”

The desire for a walk-to-the-station house means the fashionable south side is being superseded by the roads on the north side, and the whole property market is being turned on its head.